Use GTD to facilitate Work-Life Integration

Most people today have so many demands on their time that there is literally not enough time in a day to get it all done. We all strive for some kind of work-life balance but the reality of todays always-on world is there is no true separation between work and the rest of your life. Everything is integrated together such that what we really strive for is successful work-life integration.

I have found an extremely effective way to balance all of the commitments in my life and it is called Getting Things Done or GTD for short. What’s the essence of Getting Things Done? GTD provides the most systematic and effective way to manage all the commitments you have to yourself and others. GTD’s key benefit is freedom – freedom from the sources of distraction and stress in your life.

David Allen’s first book “Getting Things Done – The Art of Stress Free Productivity” is the basis for my work-life management system that has evolved over the years. I do not literally practice David Allan’s version of GTD but rather use the basic concepts and modify or adapt them to the reality of my life.

What is GTD Exactly?

There are 5 steps to GTD that I’ll go into more detail with upcoming posts, but here’s a quick overview:

1) Capture – When a thought or action comes to mind that you need or want to do something with – “stuff” – then you need to capture it in a place that your mind will trust that it won’t get lost.
2) Clarify – Go through the “stuff” that you collected in step one and give it meaning.
3) Organize – Defined your “stuff” and get it into lists optimized for later use.
4) Reflect – Look over your lists to do any clean up and decide what comes next.
5) Engage – Now that you have everything in place, do something about it.

Reducing Stress – “Mind Like Water”

The main goal behind GTD is to free up your mind. As David Allen likes to say, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” If you get things out of your head and into your trusted system, you can focus your mind on the task at hand or the person in front of you as opposed to remembering what you need to do next. It’s a way of bringing yourself back to the present because you’re not worrying about all the things you have to do and this relieves subconscious stress.

If you throw a rock into a calm pond, you see a splash and then some ripples start to form. The water reacts to forces around it in that moment and then slowly returns to its original state. GTD is a way to give your mind that ability. Getting things out of your mind and into a trusted system allows you to react to the new things coming at you and then return to your original state.

In coming posts I will detail what the 5 phases of GTD are and how you can get started on your journey to achieve “mind like water” to reduce stress and be more productive in everything that you do.